Quartz vs Unix Cron: Key Differences

Quartz cron extends Unix with a seconds field and additional special characters. Expressions valid in Quartz are often invalid in crontab and vice versa.

Field count

Unix uses five fields: minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week. Quartz adds seconds first and optionally a year field at the end.

Day-of-week numbering

Quartz uses 1–7 with Sunday as 1. Unix accepts 0 or 7 for Sunday. Always normalize before copying between systems.

The ? wildcard

Quartz requires ? on one of day-of-month or day-of-week when the other is specified. Unix cron typically uses * for "no restriction".

Validate both formats in CronWizard

Toggle Unix/Quartz in the builder or validator, preview next runs, and use platform export only after confirming a lossless Unix equivalent exists.